Court issues notice on power corridor issue

Taking suo-motto notice of media reports regarding thousands of trees facing the axe in Himachal Pradesh over the construction of a power transmission corridor, the Himachal Pradesh High Court today issued notice to the Himachal Government. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice R.B. Misra and Justice Rajeev Sharma directed the state government to give its reply within three weeks.

This issue was also highlighted by Himachal Live in its report Himachal ‘gifts’ 20,000 trees to power company. The state could lose the trees due to lapses on the part of the state forest department, which has given it’s nod to a power transmission corridor in a highly eco-sensitive zone in Kinnaur district.

The department has allowed Jaypee Powergrid Ltd (JPL), a joint venture of the Jaiprakash Hydro-Power Ltd and the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, to lay the power transmission corridor from Karcham in Kinnaur district to Abdulhapur in Haryana through thick forests in Kinnaur. 320 hectares of forest area is to be diverted for the transmission corridor.